The humans could be more interesting, but the mood of the game would change.

As it is, the drone-view is very convincing. You see a grainy approximation of the derelict, that could easily have been assembled from some kind of sonar. It’s noisy, and riddled with bugs, and it feels real, it looks like what a drone could send you. This helps build the atmosphere.

I don’t know if watching human characters on the ship would feel as real to me. I’d be playing a game at my computer instead of operating drones to gather fuel. All alone.

I think replacing the drones with people would undermine what I enjoy about Duskers. You are alone, with no idea what has happened to everyone. Your only way to interact with the world is via the drones. You give them names, and they develop ‘personalities’, but this is just you projecting yourself onto their behaviours, as they have no agency beyond how you command them. As each drone becomes lost or less useful, part of your ability to interact with the world is also lost. The atmosphere that Duskers creates for me would be undermined if you were instructing other people. Why are you personally sat safe in the command seat? The command line interface also just makes more sense if they’re drones. Tapping away at your keyboard sending drones as extensions of yourself through a derelict just feels a lot more meaningful than sending a group of people. Duskers is about being alone in space, and slowly despairing as your control of the situation slowly deteriorates.
For something a bit like Duskers with people, try Deadnaut (https://deadnaut.com/) maybe.

I also had a slight realisation as to why Duskers resonates so well with me. I’m a marine biologist, and I’ve spent a fair bit of time investigating the seafloor using a variety devices. Grossly oversimplifying, there are two crucial data feeds that get sent back once a device is in the water. The first is positional information, since you rarely have eyes on anything, which is typically displayed on a 2D chart alongside other known features like bathymetry or pipelines etc. The other is a live feed of data that the device is measuring, be it video or acoustic data.

By happy accident or careful design, the schematic ship view and then the individual drone data feeds from Duskers fits this setup. Combined with the command line interface, it makes Duskers plausible. I almost hesitate to use that word considering the theme, but I can’t think of another game where the interface and information provided is so natural and intuitive.

This led to a related thought about how to make Duskers more immersive (in a highly impractical way). Have a game mode allowing multiple monitors. 6 of them in fact. One for each drone, one for the schematic map, one for the command interface. Information overload. But imagine having the constant static of a dead drone in the corner of your eye to remind you of your mistakes and failings…

This led to a related thought about how to make Duskers more immersive (in a highly impractical way). Have a game mode allowing multiple monitors. 6 of them in fact. One for each drone, one for the schematic map, one for the command interface. Information overload. But imagine having the constant static of a dead drone in the corner of your eye to remind you of your mistakes and failings…

Got to my 5th ship with Ted, Dougal and Jack. Saw a room full of scrap and, it turns out, hostile robot defenders, so came up with A Plan to lure them into the empty room next door and flush them into space. It worked! So I went to clean up with Ted and Jack.
Now Ted and Dougal are both wrecked, Jack is disabled in an irradiated hallway and there’s a very cross robot sitting in my drone hanger eating all my biscuits. Lesson learned; just because one thing has moved doesn’t mean the other one has.
I’ll try again tonight!

Also, I would like to volunteer for almost certain death, if this is still happening.

Well, I just had my most Duskersy experience yet. Gingerly opened a door into an ‘inconclusive’ area. Something flies out at me. I back away, drop a trap. We’re right by our exit airlock, it’s gonna be fine, it’s all gonna be fine! I open the airlock just as I remember that I hadn’t yet gotten around to redocking the ship where I meant to go.

I am so glad Quinns suggested to turn the sound up in the review video. I only have a 2.1 speaker set but holy scrap the sound of the derelict groaning and stressing right before horrible things may or may not happen is terrifying! I feel like those captains in the old WW2 submarine films in silent running waiting for the depth charge and praying you survive it (the radiation bells only enforce this). Then the inevitable “seal SgtBash in r14 or we’ll irradiate the whole ship”. Then you watch as it slowly succumbs to radiation until “drone 3 was disabled”.

I’m beginning to wonder if there is some coding trickery going on in regards to occupied rooms.

I’m slow and methodical with my room exploration - and whenever I take that extra 2/3 minutes to ensure there is zero risk to my drones, it turns out there was no threat and I’ve wasted those 3 minutes.

Whenever I decide to risk it - guaranteed it’s immediate death for all of my drones!